With the rapidly growing trend of mobile and remote data access over high-speed communication networks, such as 3G, 4G, or LTE cellular services, accurately delivering data has become increasingly challenging and difficult. A high-speed communication network that is capable of delivering information includes, but is not limited to, a wireless network, a cellular network, wireless personal area network (“WPAN”), wireless local area network (“WLAN”), wireless metropolitan area network (“MAN”), or the like. These networks typically utilize different transmission or network protocols based on industry standards for each protocol.
One technique used to address the challenges of high-speed wireless data communication is referred to as Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) processing. CoMP processing enables dynamic transmission and reception between user equipment (UE) and multiple geographically separated antennas. For example, UE signals received by multiple antennas can be evaluated so that the best signal is selected for processing. In another example, UE signals received by multiple antennas can be combined and processed to produce a final output signal, which improves processing for weak signals or signals that include interference.
CoMP processing is based on receiving multiple versions of the same signal at multiple antennas. One or more of the multiple versions are transmitted to a single processing system to give that processing system access to the one or more versions of the signal for processing. Thus, one problem associated with CoMP processing is signal latency (or delay) that occurs when transferring the different versions of the received signal to the central processing system. For example, delays may be introduced by the need for additional processing to transfer the different versions to a central processor, and by the communication delay from the different receiving sites. If there is too much latency, the central processing system may not be able to process the multiple versions of the received signal within the available time interval.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a way to provide low latency CoMP processing in a wireless communications network, thereby overcoming the problems of latency associated with conventional systems.